B & E Ever After: A Hansel and Gretel Story (Fairy Tale Quartet Book 3)

by Linda Kage

  “The scuff marks I cleaned were over on this side,” I offered when he failed to find anything after two tries.

  He stepped that way, prodded another tile, and then—

  Jackpot.

  Pausing, he glanced at me. “Something’s on top of this one.”

  He lifted the tile next to it and rose up onto his toes to feel around blindly with his free hand before he sucked in a breath and pulled down a small wooden box.

  “Holy shit,” I shrieked, jumping up and down in shock. “It looks just like the box in the show I just saw. This is so creepy. I hope there’s not a jar full of teeth inside.”

  Hayden glanced at me, startled. “Come again?”

  I waved a hand. “Long story. Let’s just take the box and go.”

  But he shook his head. “We can’t. The police have to be the ones to confiscate it. We just need to know what’s inside and where to direct them to find it.”

  I bit my lip, feeling antsy. “Okay. Fine. But hurry. I’m starting to feel nervous about this.”

  “And you weren’t before?” he asked incredulously as he crouched down low on the counter before hopping to the floor and setting the box on the island.

  “Well, yeah, sure,” I admitted. “But now I really am. Holy shit,” I offered when he simply flipped the lid open. “She didn’t even lock it. Maybe it’s not—”

  “It is,” he countered with steely determination. “Otherwise, why was it hidden up there?”

  “Right. Of course.”

  Good point.

  Inside, lay a mountain of paperwork, a few pictures, and—what do you know—two cell phones. No teeth, though, thank God.

  “Damn,” I breathed when he reached in to pick up one of the ancient-looking phones. “It looks like one of those versions they even came out with before flip phones. They have to be at least—”

  “Twenty years old,” Hayden finished for me, staring at it harshly as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “What?” I took in his expression before asking, “Do you recognize them?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” He squinted in concentration. “Lana dated this guy when I was younger. This was after my biological father—Charles—died but before she met Arthur. I remember he showed me his new phone once when he came to pick her up for a date. It was brand new and maybe I’m not remembering this right, but I swear it looked an awful lot like this one.”

  “You think one of these was his phone?” I shook my head, confused. “Why would she have kept his phone, though?”

  And why were there two of them?

  The stalker guy in the movie Papá and Miguel had been watching had only kept the phones of people he’d stalked or killed.

  Whoa. Not a reassuring thought.

  Hayden could only squint at the phones, not able to make sense of their presence in Lana’s box either. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “She and that guy didn’t date long. She found out he was married, so she dumped him and then took me and Brick away for a vacation in Monte Carlo. When we got home, the police stopped by our house to ask her questions because that guy and his wife had gone missing, but…” Glancing at me, he seemed confused. “She couldn’t have anything to do with their disappearance. She was out of the country when that happened.”

  I nodded, even as I said, “Unless she hired someone else to take care of them and made sure she had an airtight alibi thousands of miles away while it happened.”

  “Jesus.” He shook his head. “But we don’t have time to figure that out now.” Pulling his phone from his pocket he turned it on with his thumb and snapped off a photo of the two phones, then snatched a slip of paper from the top of the pile. “There’s too much here to go through now. Can you help me take pictures of everything? We can go to my place afterward to sort through them all.”

  “Okay. Sounds like a plan.” I dug through my purse and tugged out my own phone.

  Without reading to see what it was about, I removed the next sheet of folded paper from the pile and unfolded it, then flattened it with my hand and focused my phone in. It took me about two pictures to zoom in and capture the entire handwritten page. Once that was done, I reached for the next bundle.

  Next to me, Hayden was busy photographing something else.

  I’d just gotten my hand on the second item in the box when his phone dinged with an incoming text message. Hayden read the notification and cursed fluidly.

  “Shit. She’s on her way back to the apartment.”

  “What? Now?!” I shrieked. “I thought you said ten minutes?! That wasn’t even five.”

  “What can I say? Brick’s power of irritating Lana is far larger than his will to distract her.” He grabbed the folded bundle from my hand and shoved it back into the box. “We need to get this back above the tiles. Now.”

  He slammed the lid shut and hopped back onto the counter.

  “Make sure the tile falls back perfectly in place,” I instructed, remembering the movie. “That’s how the killer in the show I was watching realized she’d found his kill box.”

  He sent me a harassed glance but did as I ordered, arranging everything neatly before hopping back down onto the floor next to me.

  “I’m seriously concerned about the things you watch,” he panted as he grabbed my hand to flee, but I resisted.

  “The countertop,” I hissed. “You left a scuff mark.”

  When I started to rub it clean with my fingers, he hissed, “What are you doing? She’s going to come through the front door any—”

  “And if she sees that scuff, she’ll know someone was up there. Then she’ll move it.”

  “Dammit,” he muttered, pausing impatiently beside me and watching the entrance of the kitchen as I worked.

  From the front of the apartment, we heard the front door open.

  “That’ll have to do,” he whispered, taking my arm and jerking me along behind him. I tried to get a glance over my shoulder as we went, but I could barely make out the countertop. I didn’t spot any black smudges any longer from across the room, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any.

  Crap.

  Fingers crossed that I’d cleaned it good enough, I turned to watch where Hayden was taking us.

  In front of me, he guided the way, pausing just out of sight of the doorway as Lana passed by inches away in the hall. Once we heard her enter her bedroom, he tightened his grip on my fingers and yanked me into the hall. We darted toward the front of the apartment, where he slipped the door open without a sound.

  A second later, we were in the hallway of Preston Estates, panting out our relief against the opposite wall and facing Lana’s bejeweled door from across the corridor.

  With a grin, I glanced over at Hayden who was breathing hard and smoothing the back of his hand over his glistening brow.

  “Was it just me,” I asked, trying to catch my breath. “Or was that a fucking rush?”

  He glanced over as if I’d lost my mind. Then a slow smile spread over his face. “It had a certain appeal,” he finally admitted.

  With a husky laugh, I answered, “Hell yes, it did.” And I cupped his face between my gloved hands before kissing him breathless.

  Chapter 25

  Hayden

  Reluctantly tearing my mouth from Gabby’s, I peeled one of her hands from the front of my shirt, where she was holding me tight, and I jerked my gloves off before taking her fingers again to squeeze them warmly.

  Because seriously, if I let her keep kissing me the way she was, we’d never make it home.

  “Let’s go back to my place,” I said.

  Her eyes glittered with awareness, and the color in her cheeks heightened as she nodded eagerly. Jesus, she wanted me. She really wanted me. My body stirred and jeans grew tight.

  I began to forget about our original mission for the evening and all the evidence we had collected on our phones as I towed her down the hall toward the exit, pausing once at a trash receptacle to dispose of our gloves. Nothing seemed a
s important as getting inside this woman.

  Once we reached my car, I stopped completely, turning toward her before I opened her door. After kissing her hair, I pressed my brow to hers and simply breathed her in, enjoying this moment of simply standing there against her, our breaths still coming fast and bodies straining for more contact. She seemed to understand everything that was racing through me because she lifted her hand and pressed her palm flat against my heart before erotically sliding her touch down my chest toward my belt.

  I groaned out an anticipatory breath and ripped open the passenger side door. Gabby looked up at me; the trust and need in her brown eyes a powerful aphrodisiac. She smiled with promise before she turned and climbed into her seat. Taking a moment after shutting her door to calm myself, I exhaled and strode around toward the driver’s side.

  “So, what’re we going to do with everything we took pictures of?” Gabby asked as soon as I sat beside her.

  She already had her phone out and was scrolling through her pictures.

  Dammit. Those few seconds it had taken me to get into the fucking car had distracted her back to the matter at hand. I was hoping we could put that off until after—well, never mind. Now I was thinking about the pictures we’d taken too. Shit.

  “I have a wireless printer at home,” I told her. “We should both be able to print the photos we took straight from our phones.”

  “Good.” She leaned in toward her phone and squinted at the screen. “Maybe it’ll blow things up big enough to read better because, ugh, reading off this tiny screen is so not cool.”

  I glanced over as she sighed, giving up on trying to decipher what she was looking at, and put her phone away.

  “Did you photograph anything that looked like the will?” I asked.

  “No.” She winced and met my gaze. “You?”

  “No.” Fuck.

  I hissed out a breath and refused to let that defeat me because at least we knew where to go to look for it now.

  Gabby had similar thoughts. She squeezed my arm and smiled encouragingly. “But we found something, huh?”

  “Yeah.” I took her hand and rubbed my thumb over the back of her fingers. “We sure did.”

  “What do you think those phones were about?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure. But they can’t be good if she kept them.”

  “And then hid them,” Gabby added. “If they really did belong to that couple—”

  “Then she’s more dangerous than I originally thought,” I finished as I glanced her way. “I know she has no qualms about destroying a person’s reputation and their self-esteem. She lies, steals, tricks, and manipulates. But this would be the first I’ve seen her actually cause physical harm to anyone.”

  Gabby bit her lip. “Maybe she wasn’t involved in their disappearance, then.”

  “But what if she was?” I countered.

  “Then we’d be doing her a favor by getting her taken out of society.”

  I sent her a questioning look. When she glanced back, she seemed to say that all this work I was putting into catching Lana doing something illegal wasn’t a bad thing, I wasn’t a monster, and there were good intentions behind all my actions.

  Except I wasn’t sure that was enough. We all knew where the road that was paved with good intentions led. What if I was still headed in the wrong direction?

  Exhaling, I pulled into an open parking spot in front of my complex and stared up at my building, wondering if all this would’ve been better if I’d just shoved my head in the sand, looked the other way, and pretended like I didn’t know how awful my mother was. That seemed to be Brick’s strategy, and he seemed happier for it.

  But that wasn’t me, I guess. And if this path was wrong, then I guess I was going to be wrong. Because too many people I cared about would get hurt if I looked the other way.

  Next to me, Gabby leaned forward in her seat to gape up at my home. “You live here?”

  I nodded. It was a quieter place on the edge of town away from the hustle and bustle of things. Someday, when I had more time and wasn’t so preoccupied with justice and getting Kaitlynn her inheritance back, I thought I might like to find something out in the country, even further away from everyone else. But for now, this would do.

  “Holy shit,” Gabby breathed, her mouth falling open. “This is—” She glanced toward me.

  I furrowed my brow, thinking she didn’t approve. Glancing up at my building, I asked, “It’s what?”

  “It’s fucking amazing,” she burst out. “I mean, I knew you had to be rich and everything, but Jesus, Hayden. We really come from completely different worlds, don’t we?”

  Blinking, I took in the panic on her face, and I experienced a little anxiety myself. I definitely didn’t want this to scare her off. I didn’t want her scared at all.

  “Hey, come on,” I teased gently, taking her hand. “Don’t get self-conscious on me now, Salazar. You’re the girl who was completely unimpressed by that generous tip I gave you at the café.”

  She sniffed. “I mean, I wouldn’t say I was completely unimpressed,” she countered, probably just to be her contradictory self. “It did pay my water bill.”

  I drew her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Just because we came from different places doesn’t mean we can’t end up in the same place.”

  Her lips parted as she took in my expression. “Are you saying you want to—you know—go to the same place as me?”

  “Hell, yes,” I murmured, watching her eyes darken with pleasure as I returned, “Don’t you?”

  She nodded mutely, her head bobbing up and down more forcefully with each sweep.

  Something enormous and filling burst open inside me. Nodding back to her, I squeezed her fingers. “Then let’s get started now.”

  I opened my door and hurried around to her side, but she was already out of the car to meet me. We shared ridiculously ecstatic grins, and I took her hand to show her which apartment was mine.

  Once I unlocked the door and followed her inside, I flipped on the light and reached for her, but she merely grinned and shook her head, backing away.

  “We should look at the evidence we found first, before we—”

  When she trailed off without finishing the sentence, I lifted my eyebrows mockingly. “Before we what?”

  With a sniff, she rolled her eyes. “Come on, Carmichael. You know I’m not leaving this apartment any time tonight.”

  Damn. I went straight-up hard, no slow build-up, just bam—ready for action. With a groan, I nodded. But my head wasn’t in it as I took her to my office and made sure my printer was full of paper.

  Gabby was all business and already had her phone out. “Is this you?” she asked, twisting the screen of her phone around to have me confirm my printer name.

  With a nod, I dug my own phone from my back pocket.

  The printer whirled to life, and pages began to spit out. Gabby finished printing her sheets before I started. I decided to wait until I had all mine printed before picking up the stack.

  Meanwhile, she began to browse.

  And as she did, she hummed under her breath. “Hmm. I wonder what this is.” I watched her squint at the first page as she cleared her throat and commenced to read silently, only for her eyebrows to spike sky high. “Oh!” She turned the page, her eyes scanning with wide-eyed interest, only for a frown to mar her brow soon thereafter. “Oh, wow.”

  “What?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  She held up a finger to interrupt me. “Wait. I thought your dad’s given name was Charles.” She glanced at me. “Isn’t that what you said earlier?”

  Things inside me went very still and alert. “Yes,” I said slowly. “Why? Did you find something about my father?”

  “No.” She shook her head, looking confused. And for some reason, I knew exactly whose name she was going to say, even as she announced, “I found something from an Isaac Carmichael.”

  “Isaac? Are you sure?”

 
“Positive. Do you know who that is?”

  I held out my hand, silently asking for the letter.

  Instead of handing it over, though, she blinked prettily and sent me a fake smile that told me she wasn’t going to give me anything until I answered her.

  So I released a small breath and said, “He’s my brother.”

  “Wait. What?!”

  Horror filled her features so I immediately amended, “Half brother. Much older half-brother on my father’s side.”

  “Oh.” Her shoulders relaxed, only for her to make another face. “Still. That’s kind of—”

  “Will you just let me see the damn letter?”

  “Um, well…” She glanced down uneasily, only to look back at me and cringe, holding the page against her chest away from me. “Are you sure you really want to read it? It might be a bit—I don’t know—life-altering.”

  Life-altering?

  I just looked at her and kept my hand held out, waiting.

  She sighed out a reluctant mutter. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  The letter landed in my palm. As soon as I looked down and began to read, Gabby scurried around behind me so she could reread it over my shoulder.

  Shaking her head in awe, she whistled low. “This is seriously some crazy shit. The dude was boinking his stepmom. I mean, wow. Just wow.”

  My eyebrows furrowed as I read the handwritten words on the sheet of copy paper. “This doesn’t make any sense,” I finally exploded. Isaac and Lana had slept together? “How is it even possible?”

  “Well,” Gabby started in a patronizing voice. “When a man and a woman find each other attractive—”

  I tossed her a glare. “No. You don’t understand. The reason Lana even married Charles was because his son, Isaac, turned her down first. Isaac was the one she really wanted, but he rejected her, so her revenge against him was to take his dad.”

  Gabby’s mouth dropped open, and she blinked at me a moment before blurting, “You have got to be freaking kidding me. I mean, that is some for-real soap opera bullshit, right there. But—” Gabby motioned blindly toward the letter. “Isaac must’ve changed his mind after she married his dad—I mean, your dad. Whatever—because they obviously did something together. He clearly says it’s over between them and he orders her not to leave her husband to be with him. The husband who’s his own dad. Whoa.” She shook her head, only to point again. “So, this—I mean, the baby Isaac’s referring to here—the one she’s pregnant with and he tells her to abort—” Gabby met my eyes and winced. “Is that you?”